Dawit Isaak Eritrea

Status: Detained

On November 2, 2015, the International Day to End Impunity, Dawit Isaak spent his 5,000th day in custody. Dawit has been held in prison for over a decade without being charged or brought to trial by the Eritrean government.He is a playwright, writer, and co-owner ofSetit, an independent newspaper published from 1997 until its forcible closure in 2001.

Case History

Dawit Isaak was arrested on September 23, 2001, during a crackdown on independent press throughout Eritrea. He was held incommunicado by the government, and in 2012 he was hospitalized for torture suffered during imprisonment. Dawit has dual Eritrean and Swedish citizenship and has garnered attention in Sweden concerning his plight. Dawit has not been tried or charged with a single crime, though in August 2010, a senior Eritrean government adviser, Yemane Gebreab, stated that Dawit was in jail for “very serious crimes regarding Eritrea’s national security and survival as an independent state.”

There were multiple rumors that he had been killed while in custody, with the most recent rumor circulating in October 2011. In April 2012, when a government official was asked about the rumors in an interview in Sweden, he avoided the questions. In 2016, the Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh announced that Dawit was still alive. Eritrea has continued to be secretive about the conditions of Dawit’s detainment and has not disclosed any details. Three journalists, Dawit Habtemichael, Mattewos Habteab, and Wedi Itay, who were taken into custody concurrently with Dawit Isaak during the crackdown in 2001, have since died in custody at Eiraeiro prison camp. Reports indicate that Dawit Isaak is imprisoned in horrible conditions, which include torture that is widespread in Eritrean jails, and suffers from poor health and denied medical care. Dawit is an honorary member of Finnish PEN and Swedish PEN and was awarded theUNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2017.The Eritrean government has closed all independent press and media since 2001, and Eritrea has remained at the bottom of theReporters Without Borders Press Freedom Indexfor the past seven years.

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